No more kitties and puppies in Saudi Arabia

[Manedwolf]

What a completely dysfunctional culture that country has. How joyless do you have to be to ban companion animals? Music is bad. Dancing is bad. Archeology is bad. Art of people is bad. Pets are bad.

Makes the Puritans look like party animals. The wahabbists should just outright ban joy altogether and be done with it.

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Othman al-Othman, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Riyadh, known as the Muttawa, told the Saudi edition of al-Hayat daily that the commission has started enforcing an old religious edict.

He said the commission was implementing a decision taken a month ago by the acting governor of the capital, Prince Sattam bin Abdul Aziz, adding that it follows an old edict issued by the supreme council of Saudi scholars.

The reason behind reinforcing the edict now was a rising fashion among some men using pets in public "to make passes on women and disturb families," he said, without giving more details.

Othman said that the commission has instructed its offices in the capital to tell pet shops "to stop selling cats and dogs".

The 5,000-strong religious police oversees the adherence to Wahabism -- a strict version of Sunni Islam, which also forces women to cover from head to toe when in public, and bans them from driving.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080730134513.7uxdy8o9&show_article=1

[vaskidmark]

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Maybe they could just ban women?

stay safe.

skidmark

[wmenorr67]

That is funny skidmark.

I am actually surprised that they would even have dogs around to "ban."  In the Muslim religion dogs are dirty/filthy animals.

[seeker_two]

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Are you sure the men are making passes at the women?.....at least they can see what the animal looks like...... 

[Tallpine]

Othman al-Othman, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Riyadh, known as the Muttawa, told the Saudi edition of al-Hayat daily that the commission has started enforcing an old religious edict.

Is this serious

[Sergeant Bob]

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Nope.

[HankB]

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Nope.

Nope yet again.

[Declaration Day]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

[Tallpine]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

What about horses?  The legend is that the horses used to sleep in the tents with the Arabs.

[Manedwolf]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

What about horses?  The legend is that the horses used to sleep in the tents with the Arabs.

If so, probably so it wouldn't be stolen. Sort of like bringing your car up to your loft in NYC.

[Tallpine]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

What about horses?  The legend is that the horses used to sleep in the tents with the Arabs.

If so, probably so it wouldn't be stolen. Sort of like bringing your car up to your loft in NYC.

Actually, from what I have read probably exactly the opposite.

I can't remember the guys name ... German fellow I think who went out into the "Empty Quarter" and lived with the natives back in the 1920s or 1930s.  The desert folk had this moral code that you could not just steal something left lying around.  That was a disgrace, and you had to take it forcibly from its former owner - preferably by cutting his throat .

So camels and horses grazing on the "open range" were perfectly safe from theft, but anything in camp was open to robbery and murder 

Arab horses are supposed to be so "personable" because they were taken into the tents with their owners.

[Antibubba]

When pets are outlawed, only outlaws will have pets.

[gunsmith]

I guess they thought guys with puppies were nicer then the guys with Lamborghinis, and the Lamborghini crowd to the cops what to do.

[Dannyboy]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

What about horses?  The legend is that the horses used to sleep in the tents with the Arabs.

Ooh, I'll bet that really pissed off the goats.

[LadySmith]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

I could not live there. 

[AJ Dual]

IMO, sucks as it does, the religious police or whatever they have over there has to come out with an edict banning something now and again to keep themselves in the forefront and relevant.

And I bet the number of times someone actually used pets to make a pass at a member of the opposite sex over there could be counted on a two-time thief's (missing) hands. I'm guessing one of the Mullahs was indulging in his secret vice of Western movies or satellite TV saw the plot device of an actor using a pet to hit on a woman and came up with the edict then and there. 

Next it'll be iPod's or maybe just ear-bud earphones, because you could be listening to Satanistic Western music and on one would know.

[Tallpine]

Islam allows for the keeping of animals for a "legitimate purpose" such as security, work or food.  Having one for companionship is forbidden.

I could not live there. 

Me neither.  Boy, I couldn't live like that.

Keeping humans for companionship is questionable 

[Sergeant Bob]

Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

Nope.

I really can't understand why making a remark about people wearing cologne by the bucketfuls could be construed as offensive. If I were to comment about truck drivers (which I am) wearing bucketfuls of obnoxious cologne (which a great many of them do) would that be edited out by a mod as well? Are comments about peoples wear of odoriferous substances considered racist or something? When I was stationed at Lackland AFB, Texas, there were hundreds of Saudi officers there for training and I had first hand knowledge of their malodorous airs.

There are a lot worse comments made on this board by quite a few which are not edited.
I mean forcripesakes, it's just cologne.

[RevDisk]

What a completely dysfunctional culture that country has. How joyless do you have to be to ban companion animals? Music is bad. Dancing is bad. Archeology is bad. Art of people is bad. Pets are bad.

Makes the Puritans look like party animals. The wahabbists should just outright ban joy altogether and be done with it.

I wouldn't want to be the Wahabbi making that edict.   If things go as he believes, he'll be answering to his Prophet.  One story is that the Prophet Mohammed had a tabby cat which fell asleep on the sleeve of his robe. Rather than disturb the cat, he cut off his sleeve when he answered the muezzin.  Another story is that the same cat once warned Mohammed of danger from a deadly snake. 

This would be akin to a Christian banning wine.  Probably not a good way to impress one's spiritual leader, trying to ban something they obviously favored.

[De Selby]

What a completely dysfunctional culture that country has. How joyless do you have to be to ban companion animals? Music is bad. Dancing is bad. Archeology is bad. Art of people is bad. Pets are bad.

Makes the Puritans look like party animals. The wahabbists should just outright ban joy altogether and be done with it.

I wouldn't want to be the Wahabbi making that edict.   If things go as he believes, he'll be answering to his Prophet.  One story is that the Prophet Mohammed had a tabby cat which fell asleep on the sleeve of his robe. Rather than disturb the cat, he cut off his sleeve when he answered the muezzin.  Another story is that the same cat once warned Mohammed of danger from a deadly snake. 

This would be akin to a Christian banning wine.  Probably not a good way to impress one's spiritual leader, trying to ban something they obviously favored.

Yep-one of the more important figures in Islamic history is actually called "Father of the cats" because he loved them so much. 

I think there's actually a quite rational explanation for all of these edicts and bizarre laws.  Of course the Saudis realize that it's ridiculous.  But when you run a lock-step dictatorship, you need to have lots of reasons to arrest people.

When you pass a bizarro law, no one obeys it.  That gives the government the option of arresting all of its unwanteds and opponents; they can just arrest them for violating all of the bizarre laws that no one else follows anyway.